


Vada E.N.S.A

by halotolerant



Category: Round the Horne (BBC Radio)
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Relationship, M/M, Polari, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 00:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2601986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here is a typical letter which I plucked from my desk this very morning: <i>Dear Mr Horne, Please can you tell us how you first met your friends Julian and Sandy?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Vada E.N.S.A

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kindkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/gifts).



> From an old request of Kindkit's, rescued from the back of my hard-drive and dusted off *g* 
> 
> E.N.S.A (Entertainments National Service Association) was an institution set up in the UK in 1939 to organise entertainment for the troops. 
> 
> Julian and Sandy speak partially _Polari_ , a British slang associated strongly with the homosexual subculture pre-legalisation, but also other groups such as circus workers.

[HORNE]:

Now, listeners, as you know we get a lot of people writing letters our little show - and may I take this moment to tell Mr Grunge of Barking Clackthorpe that we appreciate it, we really do, but no thank you all the same and please stop sending the samples?

Dear listeners. Many letters. Many letters asking the questions that I dare say pop into all our minds at various times in the day – why was Crippen never done in oil by Gainsborough? What time is the stopping train from Huggermug? To whit and for why foliage?

Here is a typical letter which I plucked from my desk this very morning: _Dear Mr Horne, Please can you tell us how you first met your friends Julian and Sandy?_

Well, let me tell you, it was the during the war.

[bugle, sound of many hooves galloping]

Not quite that war! No, no, this was the last war! 39 – 45. Never start a war when there’s an R in the year, that’s what I say...

It was ’45 indeed, and I was leading a troupe of that most glorious and noble brigade this Earth has ever witnessed. I refer, of course, to E.N.S.A.

[stirring opening chords of anthem turn abruptly into flurry of cancan music and whoops of delight]

Yes, it was ENSA won the war for Britain. ENSA reminded our boys why they didn’t want to sit around just listening to us when there was a war they could be fighting instead!

My troupe contained a double bass player (ambidextrous, you know), a fiddler (we had but few options) and a creature with the most remarkable voice you have ever heard.

[JULIAN]:

Hello, I’m Julian! Or, should I say, since I have taken the trouble of getting up in my best bona clobber and my shiniest aunt nelly danglers – Hello, I’m _Julienne_ [exaggerated French accent], here to entertain and convert you nice soldiers!

[HORNE]:

Yes, as the little lady says, we’re here to entertain and _divert_ all you brave fighting chaps of the 5 th Supply Battalion before you get back to packing up all those important boxes of paperclips for the Western Front. And now, a song...

[Strains of ‘There’ll Always Be an England’, over which Horne starts again to speak]

Julian had been with us from the beginning. We tried changing taxis, moonlight flits, even blindfolding him – he always found us again...

[JULIAN]:

As if you wanted to be left on your tod with all those naff orchestra omis and their hollow, wooden instruments! Would have been scared without me, ducky, wouldn’t you?

[HORNE]:

It was true, I did value Julian’s company. He had a knack of making any doss house, any digs, any drafty church hall into somewhere like home. Of course, I was raised by wolves, so my idea of home was... Anyhow, of an evening, he and I would sit together by the radio, me knitting socks for the German soldiers (if you saw my knitting, you would understand), and him darning a false eyelash or making much of his latest pet. The things he picked up as we travelled, you would not believe.

[JULIAN]:

The as-yet unbeaten record for number of different regiments in a day is still mine. It’s on a plaque, now, down the Commando Club, all zhooshy for the world to see. Me nailed to the wall, you see, it feels right don’t it?

[HORNE]:

Now look, who’s telling this story? So there we were, entertaining the 5th Battalion of pencil-pushing administrators...

[pause]

[JULIAN]:

What are you looking at me for?

[HORNE]:

Thought you might want to interject there.

[JULIAN]:

No darling. Maybe later.

[HORNE]:

 Very well. So there we were, with the 5th Battalion...

[JULIAN]:

 You’ve done them already

[HORNE]:

You’re one to talk. Anyway, Julian was singing, and many of the audience were still alive and conscious enough to join in the chorus.

[more strains of ‘There’ll Always Be An England’, until a suddenly, over the tuneless warbling, comes a clear and beautiful voice who eventually carries the chorus alone]

[SINGING VOICE]:

_Show me you’re proud! Shout it aloud!..._

[JULIAN]: 

Sandy!

[HORNE]:

And just like that, our leading lady took a flying leap from the stage, pushed through the crowd and began to throttle the new arrival, slapping him around the head and yelling words I shall not repeat.

[JULIAN]:

I called him a naff, meese, lily-plating...

[HORNE]:

Yes, all of that and more.

[JULIAN]:

But I didn’t mean it! I was so very cross with him. He’d gone over to France in 1940, you see, and never come back again, and I thought he was dead. And he had the nerve to show up again five years later and make me cry my slap all over my face.

[SANDY]:

I told you I couldn’t write - I didn’t have your address. But I spent five years thinking of you. My dear, the camp I was in! No vogues for love nor measures – I tried both. Naff as you please, some rough trade if you could stand it and didn’t mind getting your paws dirty, and some dally innocent tootsie-omis, all lost in the world, the poor chicks, but I missed my Julian every day.

[JULIAN]:

[in a serious, hesitant voice]

Did you really miss me?

[SANDY]:

[softly]

Can you doubt it?

[HORNE]:

[hastily]

And then the collected braves of the 5th Pencil Pushers were treated to a sight not only entertaining, but some might indeed say educational, but not, however, within the listings of the published programme.

[JULIAN]:

After that, though, I added Sandy to my programme every night.

[HORNE]:

Yes, Sandy was a fine addition to our ENSA chorus.

[JULIAN]:

That too.

[SANDY]:

Julian was always such a bonaroo dorcas for helping me hit my high spots.

[affectionate murmuring]

[HORNE]:

Then, the war ended... Hitler, repelled to the last by the piercing thrust of our armies and Julian’s most optimistic soprano solos, was routed. ENSA’s days were over...

[sounds of funeral march, weeping, groaning]

Luckily I knew of a place where forever that spirit of friendship, low budgets, dubious catering and above all readiness for the task to bring culture to the masses whether they liked it or not would live on, undaunted, forever. I refer, of course, to the BBC.

[cheers, fast-paced excerpt from ‘Rule Britannia’]

And here we are still. And on that note, let us turn to the world of modern literature, with the latest from our serialisation of Shakespeare’s ‘MacHamlet’...

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I may well have not got the Polari usage totally accurate, and corrections and clarifications are welcome. 
> 
> Glossary:
> 
> bona - good  
> clobber - clothes  
> aunt nelly danglers - earrings  
> naff - awful, dull  
> omis - men  
> zhooshy - shiny/showy  
> meese - ugly  
> lily-plating - one who fellates a policeman  
> slap - makeup  
> vogues - cigarettes  
> dally - sweet/kind  
> tootsie-omis - passive men  
> bonaroo - excellent  
> dorcas - term of affection


End file.
